Portland Thorns and WNBA's Fire Open $150M Joint Training Facility, a Women's Sports First

For fans and athletes who have spent decades watching women's professional teams squeeze into retrofitted municipal parks, shared collegiate weight rooms, and borrowed high school gyms, the baseline for what a franchise should look like just permanently shifted. The era of making do is over; the era of bespoke, nine-figure infrastructure has arrived.

The Portland Thorns of the National Women's Soccer League and the WNBA's Portland Fire have officially opened the doors to the Kaiser Permanente Performance Center in Hillsboro, Oregon. The $150 million, 100,000-square-foot complex stands as the first purpose-built facility in the United States designed exclusively for two professional women's teams operating in different sports.[1][2]

Built on a 12-acre campus that repurposes a former Nike office complex, the facility represents a massive capital injection by RAJ Sports, the ownership group led by Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal that controls both the Thorns and the expansion Fire. The official ribbon-cutting takes place this weekend, but players from both rosters began touring their new home earlier in the week.[1][3]

The sheer scale of the compound rivals elite men's facilities across North America. The grounds feature two full-sized outdoor soccer pitches alongside a 17,000-square-foot gymnasium housing a pair of regulation basketball courts. A 5,000-square-foot strength and performance center, complete with an outdoor turf training zone, anchors the athletic development wing.[1][2]

But it is the facility's bespoke details—engineered specifically around the realities of female professional athletes—that separate it from traditional sports complexes. The building includes two dedicated nursing and changing rooms for players who are parents, alongside a fully stocked nursery.[1]

Recovery and wellness spaces were designed with a deliberate, spa-like atmosphere. A dimly lit meditation and massage area features a ceiling painted to resemble a forest canopy, while athletes have access to a dedicated Pilates and yoga studio, hydrotherapy pools, and an underwater treadmill.[1][2]

"I was there Monday morning early when the players came in for the first time, and cut the ribbon on the locker room and just felt this beautiful space that had been created for them, and it's great," Portland Fire President Clare Hamill noted during a facility tour.[1]

The joint venture also centralizes medical and nutritional care. A full-service dining room is staffed by a dedicated chef and nutritionist, while the naming-rights partnership with Kaiser Permanente ensures onsite doctors overseeing sports medicine, injury prevention, and mental health services.[2][3]

The opening marks a critical milestone for the Bhathal family, who purchased the Thorns for $63 million in early 2024 before paying a $125 million expansion fee to bring the WNBA's Fire back to Portland. By housing both franchises under one roof, the ownership group is betting that shared resources will foster a unique cross-sport culture.[4][5]

Near the foyer, an expansive, glass-enclosed trophy case sits illuminated and waiting. As Bhathal Merage pointed out to visitors this week, the shelves are currently empty, but they are "soon to be filled." For two franchises carrying the weight of Portland's rabid women's sports fanbase, the infrastructure is now in place to make good on that promise.[1]